


our blood in the water and death is the sea

by further



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-20
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 22:13:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/728475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/further/pseuds/further
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam Milligan the first Supernatural story arc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our blood in the water and death is the sea

Shea has been writing Supernatural fiction about Adam Winchester and she posted these icons that were just... they just took me right back to how I felt watching "Jump the Shark". That was the one S4 episode that really hit me in a way that I almost forgot this show could.

In class today, we were talking about the comfort that culture can offer the individual- what drives anyone to reread a favorite novel or go see an retrospective of a particular photographer's work, go to a concert, visit a sculpture, learn an instrument et cetera.

And I was wondering what it was about "Jump the Shark" that resonated so strongly with me- particularly since it seemed to encapsulate something about the overall series.

It turns out it was the way that episode conveyed what loss is. Loss has been a major theme on Supernatural from the start, something that motivates not only the Winchesters, but many of the show's characters, many of the plots. Even if you just take the first episode apart: Dean loses John when he goes missing, the back-story of losing Sam when he cuts his family out of his life for 4 years, the way Mary's death drives John to tear the boys away from their childhood, the death of Sam's lover and losing his dream-life at the end of the episode. It's one kind of loss on top of another.

"Jump the Shark" was easily the most emotional story of last season- those boys had to act their asses off to emote the layered ambivalence that was super-charging every minute of on-screen face-time. The story vividly evoked the symbolic ghost of John Winchester in a way we hadn't seen in a while- and that's always a heavy thing. But then there was all this other conflicting and contradictory emotion pile-driving Sam and Dean- weird joy about finding a brother, envy and jealousy about Adam's relationship with John, a mutual desire to protect Adam, anger at one another about how to best brother him, echoes of those old dynamics from Sam and Dean's childhood, anger and hurt because their father is still so unknown to them even now, the horror at realizing they were already too late to save Adam, that they would never know him.

It might not have been the episode I liked the most, but it was the one that mattered the most to me last season, hit me in the heart the hardest. It also made me realize that there was a real absence of that kind of writing in season 4- the kind that just slices right into my emotional armor.

Look, I'm not saying I like to see loss acted out for kicks or for comfort. I'm saying comfort can mean a great many things- empathy and understanding for instance. Often in pop culture, loss is a thing to be avoided or shown in an oversimplified way, exaggerated for a sense of romantic self-pity or to add depth to a badly-written character or story. But the way Supernatural's writers have always handled it feels closer to truth. The losses on this show linger even as the characters try and turn upwind of them or escape their power. No loss of any importance on Supernatural is ever blameless or simple. Nobody has a heart attack or dies of old age. There are always heavy and confounding ramifications for those left behind. And that's one of the big ways this show is so unique. Because in real life, loss is complicated and it does leaves us with unfinished business. We do fight it with everything we've got and through it we become desperate. It changes our perspective on the ordinary and can alter the direction of our lives.

And not knowing how to grieve it can stretch its impact out ad infinitum.

I never sold my soul to keep from losing somebody I love, but I understand why someone would if they had the chance. In fact, I pretty much understand all the crazy things these characters (Mary included) have done when confronted with loss- whether it was done trying to circumvent that loss or its something they are driven to in the wake of losing. Despite the spectacular ways which the tragic happens on Supernatural and the equally fantastic things the Winchesters do to try and outrun grief, these stories remind me that my blues are not so very different from anyone else's. And that's what allows me to rejoin the human race a little piece at a time despite the complexity of my own losses and the far more ordinary ways that death has come into my life. When a story like Adam's nudges me farther into acceptance, my losses weigh on me just a little less. And acceptance feels a lot realer than resignation and denial. It's comforting. And something I've always appreciated about the writing on this show.

~2009


End file.
